[B]URLINGTON — Layoffs in the Burlington School District that earlier this year were anticipated to claim the jobs of as many as 24 employees actually resulted in only three layoffs, according to district officials.
The three who don’t have jobs anymore either didn’t have the certifications for remaining vacancies or declined other job offers, officials said.
However, belt tightening to comply with Act 46, the state’s new education law meant to reduce property taxes, and a new commitment not to run a deficit has led to cuts in other areas.
At a school board meeting last week, a half dozen librarians bemoaned cuts to librarian positions at Burlington High School and two of the four elementary schools in the district. Librarian positions are being reduced from full to half time at those schools.
Donna MacDonald, a member of the Vermont School Library Association, read a letter from the American Library Association that acknowledged the budget pressures Burlington and other districts face but urged that the cuts be reversed. She cited research showing the presence of librarians correlates with academic achievement.
MacDonald and others questioned whether Burlington would be in compliance with Vermont’s education quality standards and the standards of the accreditation agency the New England Association of Schools and Colleges if it made the intended cuts.
They pointed out that Burlington High School faces its NEASC review this fall and questioned whether the school would meet the organization’s standards without a full-time certified librarian.
“Without the skillful direction of a school librarian, the very asset you have cut from Burlington students, these standards cannot be met,” MacDonald said, reading from the letter written by the American Library Association.
A Moveon.org petition calling for the librarian positions to be restored to full time was delivered to school board members with several hundred signatures at its Tuesday meeting.
Board Chair Mark Porter said the district had to make tough decisions in order to stay within the budget voters approved on the March Town Meeting Day ballot. The district had to close a $2.5 million gap in its $84 million budget.
It did so with a much smaller reduction to teaching positions than was initially expected, but Porter said the board still had to make some difficult choices.
“In this case, when you get down to something like this, which is librarians, which does help those most in need, it’s a very, very tough thing, and it was very touching to try to find out how we can fix this. So, we haven’t given up,” Porter said.
“We are listening to you, and we all really think we still have some time here to try and do everything we can to make this better,” he added.
Superintendent Yaw Obeng, speaking at Tuesday’s meeting, assured those present that libraries in the district will meet all regulations. The high school will rely on a mix of a part-time certified librarian, library para-educators, technicians and teachers.
The high school’s library will be open during all school hours, Obeng added. The Sustainability Academy and Integrated Arts Academy, two elementary schools in Burlington’s Old North End, will share a certified librarian. They will work to keep library spaces at those schools accessible to teachers even when the librarian isn’t there, he said.
Obeng sent an email Friday declining to comment further. As a result, it’s unclear why the district’s four other elementary schools were not included in the library cuts, or whether they currently have full-time librarians.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Obeng also cited budget pressures as the reason for librarian cuts and said there were no cuts he could make that wouldn’t rankle some constituency within the city.
“Judging from my experience in Burlington so far, there isn’t anything we could reduce in our system that people would say, ‘Oh, that isn’t important,’” he said, adding that is an indication of how much the community cares about education.
Still, Obeng sought to assure the public that school libraries would continue to meet students’ needs.
“We’re not going to offer something that’s going to be less than par at this point,” he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of elementary schools in the district. There are six not four elementary schools in the Burlington School District. That version also incorrectly stated that a Moveon.org petition calling for the cuts to be restored was taken down.
